International AIDS Society
The World AIDS Conference (English International AIDS Conference) is held regularly by the International AIDS Society. It involves the most important meetings of scientists and non-scientists on the subject of HIV and AIDS.
An important feature of the conference is the Global Village as a meeting of stakeholders, members and representatives of the helping and healing professions in which often demonstrate already terminally ill by their artistic performances will to survive and the worldwide community of people infected meets and exchanges. Hope still is the motto of the colorful spectacle that is reminiscent of the carnival in Rio, the parades on Christopher Street Day or the Life Ball. The conferences were first annual, held every two years from 1994. 2012 the event was held from July 22 to 27 in Washington, DC instead. The next World AIDS Konfernz to be held in Melbourne from 20 to 25 July 2014.
History
Highlights
The first conference was held in 1985 in Atlanta, Georgia in the United States instead. Other planned in the U.S. conferences were there - because of the entry ban for people living with HIV and AIDS - not stopped and had to be relocated to Amsterdam and Vancouver shortly.
While understanding was in the 1980s, to the effect of the virus on the organism and the course of the disease the focus of the conferences were the early 1990s, marked by the first successes of combination therapy and the question of how the therapy can be most useful and effective.
While already the early World AIDS conferences worked to social acceptance and discrimination, the worldwide breakthrough against the silence succeeded only in 2000 in Durban. After the South African President Thabo Mbeki put scientific findings into question and " sympathy for the theses of AIDS critics by Peter Duesberg had reveal " declared more than 5,000 scientists and physicians from more than 50 countries, including a dozen Nobel laureates, that HIV clearly the cause of AIDS was. Even Mbeki's predecessor, Nelson Mandela, turned in his closing speech unequivocally on the side of the scientists.